It’s Pays to Really Check

Patrick Annoyances, Travel, UK Life

Or rather, you don’t have to pay (or something like that).

This weekend I booked a cheap flight with E@syj3t (no linking for your today!), one of those discount airline. Admittedly I was in a hurry and I thought I got a real bargain until I got two emails from them – one for the flight and one for the insurance! Though I checked my flight details very carefully as I don’t want to fly out of the wrong airport or dates and times, I had neglected to notice they had added insurance by default and I had to remove it. Very sneaky indeed.

Although I paid only £8 of insurance, I already have travel insurance and it added another 20% to the total cost!

Removing Overused Words From Collaborative Discussions

Patrick Coaching, Work Related

I was involved in a great discussion on the weekend about two words that never help in conversations.

‘Actually’ and ‘but’

Sometimes you may find yourself in a good situation to use these “blocking” keywords, but far too often, they are abused as implicit “no, you’re wrong” statements. These words stop innovative, flowing conversations and turn them into a debate.

An alternative that I will be trying hard to use is “and.” Please post a comment if you have one you could recommend.

The Vines @ The Forum

Patrick Music, UK Life

The VinesIn November 2004 the lead singer of The Vines (Craig Nicholls) announced he had Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism). Many music sources believed that it would be a while until they did any touring, if at all. I feel especially fortunate then that they have started once again, and that I bought some tickets for their London gig on Tuesday night.

They performed at The Forum in Kentish Town, a very appropriate setting to see any rock band perform. The Forum is a decently sized venue with two floors (the second with seating), but the best part is downstairs where it is easy to get a good view of the stage.

The Vines played a great number of songs from both of their albums, Highly Evolved and Winning Days, and a handful of songs from their soon-to-be-released album, all of which the audience completely lapped up. We stood downstairs, close to the front and right on the edge of the frenzied crowd that moshed almost all night long. A huge number of people even got into the crowd surfing, and though I didn’t count exactly how many people security lifted and escorted out, it would have been easily over 30! I thought The Vines performed extremely well and I was thoroughly impressed in the encore when they got the entire crowd singing with them to their cover of Outkast’s Ms Jackson song.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

From The Tao of Coaching

Patrick Coaching, Work Related

The Tao of CoachingFrom the short but excellent Tao of Coaching book written by Max Landsberg

“Increase your effectiveness as a leader by helping others to develop and grow”

Covers great topics such as:

  • Getting and giving effective feedback that is not judgemental, timely, and focuses on specific activities, not personality traits
  • GROW (Goals, Reality, Options, Wrap Up) as an effective problem solving technique
  • Problem, Blockers (Coachee, Other People, The Situation) and Ideal Outcome as another pattern
  • Building trust and understanding a coachee’s motivation using a Skill/Will matrix

A brief, reassuring read but definitely worthwhile for anyone who has to work with people (i.e. everyone!)